


Tales From Night Vale

by Andian



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Horror, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2014-06-23
Packaged: 2017-12-23 21:50:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andian/pseuds/Andian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are some things even the man from the radio doesn't know about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Painter

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to put some focus on other possible citizens of Night Vale and how they might deal with the weird things constantly happening around them.

He painted a lot these days. 

He supposed his neighbors preferred that over the time he tried his hand at wood sculptures.  
He also supposed he enjoyed the painting more than the wood sculpture though just with the wood sculptures he had the feeling he wasn't particularly good at it.  
He tried painting the angels first and he thought that he could maybe give it Old Woman Josie or something but when the picture had been finished he turned it around and never looked at it again.

He wasn't sure why. He just know that he did not want to see what he had painted. Never again. Every time he tried to imagine the picture he had created, of the angel carrying Old Woman Josie's groceries he came up with a blank. The only thing he know was that he had used a lot of yellow and violet for it. Too much yellow and violet really. 

He told himself to stop being paranoid -paranoid people ended up in a conversation with the Sheriff's Secret Police having to explain with great details the things they were paranoid about- and just continued painting. 

He painted Desert Bluff then. He didn't know why. He was mostly indifferent to their neighbor city though he did boo them out like everyone else when Night Vale played against them. But he painted it and he painted it for two days straight with no pause in between. When he was finished he took the picture and and turned it around. Then he went and bought more red paint. 

At this point he supposed that there might be something wrong with him. He wasn't sure what exactly it could be. He had gotten all the necessary vaccines against demonic possessions and he had always made sure to wash his hands after using a bloodstone. He called the public health office and asked about cases of demonic possessions forcing people to draw pictures they couldn't look at afterward but the only possessions that happened at the moment made people float two feet in the air and sing David Hasselhoff songs backwards. 

He supposed he should go and see to a doctor but possessions weren't covered under his insurance plan so he just did the same thing his grandmother used to do and buried a headless chicken under a cactus while reciting sixteen prime number that ended with a seven. 

That night he painted the vast and endless ice desert of the Antarctica with nothing but black. He put it away just like the two pictures before and then he shrugged. It wasn't that bad he supposed. The cost of buying paint wouldn't ruin him and even though he couldn't see the pictures he had drawn he supposed he might even could be a good artist. The idea of showing his pictures to somebody else occurred to him. When he regained consciousness he stood in his completely destroyed living room the words NO NO NO NO painted in every single one of his colors on the wall. It took him almost the rest of the day to clean it up and he was slightly angry since that really was a bit of an overreaction. “Damn self-conscious demons.” he grumbled as he cleaned his walls. 

He didn't paint for three days after that. When he started painting again he painted Night Vale. He was absolutely sure that it was Night Vale. But when he was finished and turned it around he caught one brief look at the picture and what he saw was water. Just water. Nothing but water.

He blinked once and then he throw away all his painting utensils. He didn't paint for two weeks after that. Then he opened his eyes one morning and the first thing he saw were the garish pink letters above him spelling P A I N T. He had no idea who had written it on the ceiling and had managed to write it exactly at the point he first saw when he would open his eyes in the morning.

He went and bought new painting utensils the moment the shop had opened, ignoring the way Fred the shopkeeper tried to tease him about it. Back home he painted. And painted. And painted. The blank white back of the pictures he had drawn before and could for some reason neither look at nor throw away seemed to silently watch at him as he continued painting. 

When he had finished painting he could not see his skin under the thick layers of paint on paint. 

Silently he took every single one of the pictures and propped them up backwards against the walls of his living room. When he ran out of place he continued in his bedroom, then in his kitchen and when finally there were pictures leaning even against the walls of his bathroom, showing nothing but white to the inquiring eye he took the last picture in his hand and looked at it. 

He saw himself. But not the way he looked. 

His hair were gray, his eyes dull and his cheeks hollow. He looked more like a skeleton with a full beard than a human being. 

And when he looked at his finger, stiffly holding the pictures he realized how thin they were. How little skin there seemed to be left under the thick layers of color.

Only bones it seemed. Bones painted with red and white and blue and black and pink and when he stumbled to the bathroom mirror a skeleton with a full beard grinned back him.

They found a house full of blank canvas with nothing on them but the word P A I N T written on it.

The public health office issued a reminder that the only thing that helped against demonic possessions were a good doctor and the crushed bones of small critters.


	2. The Scratch

It was four in the morning. At least that was what the clock said. You could not trust the clocks in Night Vale though. She tried to close her eyes again and go back to her dream. She had been at a Thanksgiving dinner. Everybody had been there, or at least everybody who was dead. There were people there, people she had never meet but people she knew nonetheless from their skin and their bones, hidden as the might be. They had been sitting at a table and her mother had asked her to sit down with them.

It was a nice dream. She'd really like to fall asleep again.

But she couldn't. The Scratch was too close.

She had always loved silence. The complete absence of any noise. She slept with ear plugs, despised television and radio, especially the show of that one guy who always played that terrible music, and had bought a house as far away from other, _noisy_ , people as possible.

What she did like was reading and tea. And sleeping. She loved sleeping. Sleeping had proven to be a fantastic way to ignore all the annoying, filled with way too much noise things that seemed to constantly happen. When the animals had started to fall from the sky she slept through every of the terrible loud splats that their impact caused. She had managed to sleep through the screams of Street cleaning day and Valentines Day and in her opinion it was a damn good way of living.

At the moment, though. At the moment there was The Scratch. The Scratch had started yesterday when she had very quietly sat in her chair and had, equally quietly, read a book. She had noticed The Scratch immediately and the moment she had noticed it it had become The Scratch in her mind.  
Beaks. Or rather one beak. A soft tapping against glass. Just … quieter. A small bird pecking against a window far away.

Something like that. She had never been good with metaphors.

Hated them even. Her former girlfriend had been a writer and she wouldn't stop comparing her eyes to everything that could be considered blue. Not that she was thinking about Linda at the moment.

No, she couldn't think with The Scratch. The Scratch seemed to follow her around. It should not be possible, yet it was. Leaving the living room after she heard The Scratch for the first time she had gone into her bedroom. When she had gone there The Scratch had already been there.

Like claws. Or rather a claw. A gentle scraping against wood. Just … quieter. A little cat scratching at a door far away.

She had stormed, very quietly, into the bathroom, almost loosing one of her slippers and had looked the door, equally quiet, behind her.  
Then she searched for her ear plugs in absolute silence. She found them, put them in and The Scratch did stop.  
She smiled and went back to her living room. The silence continued for precisely three hours twenty-two minutes and sixteen seconds.

Then The Scratch returned.

She had a very quiet breakdown. Then she got more ear plugs. It did not help this time.  
She went to bed and tried to sleep. The complete and utter silence that only existed in her head, usually so easy obtained eluded her.

It became four in the morning. And she still could hear it.  
Closer now. When it was two rooms and a rather thick wall before, now it was one room and maybe a couch away. Not a big couch. A small one. A small one with an rather ugly color Linda had insisted on keeping.

She closed her eyes but the darkness under her eyelids was filled with The Scratch.  
She did not believe in going mad. But it seemed like a good idea at the moment.  
When the sun rose she had started moving her furniture. Turned the whole house over, found nothing but a notebook Linda had left behind under the couch which she quickly put away. And yet the Scratch continued.

Close enough now, to know that whatever was causing it was in the same room.  
She sat down and tried to to read the Night Vale Daily Journal. After half an hour in which she had not managed to find even one article between the advertisements for Big Rico's pizza and the reminder that pens were illegal she made herself some more tea.  
Tea had, next to sleep, always been the one thing to calm herself down.

Not this time though. The Scratch was there.

Like pens. Or rather one pen. Scratching on a paper. Just … quieter. A writer trying to be quiet to not disturb a loved one.

She realized it that moment and if she was anybody else she would have cursed loudly. So she just stood up and got the notebook. It was green because Linda liked green and she knew that so she had bought a green one for her. It was also dusty since it had been under the couch.

And when she hold it in her hands The Scratch seemed to fill her ears.  
She was not stupid. She knew what happened to people who were stupid in Night Vale. She also knew what happened to people who were smart so she successfully stayed on the line between not stupid enough to die and not smart enough to get killed.

Linda had been smart. She had been very smart. Had always compared her eyes to everything that could be considered blue, her metaphors becoming more and more obscure until she had to smile and Linda laughed at her success.

She hated metaphors.

Realizing that she was just delaying the incredible stupid thing she was going to do anyway she opened the book.  
 _Your eyes are the vast and disturbing endlessness of summer day skies, mixed with the impenetrable uncertainty of the ocean_ the page she opened read.  
 _Somebody took two cornflowers and planted them into the two symmetrical holes in your head._ it continued.  
The rest of the pages seemed to be pretty much the same, the compliments becoming cornier and cornier.  
She rolled her eyes and wanted to put the book away again.

Then she realized that The Scratch had almost completely stopped. Wearily she put the book down and The Scratch returned with an intensity that made her flinch. Quickly she grabbed the book again and The Scratch calmed down. Moving a page she noticed that noise of The Scratch varied. The closer she got to the beginning the louder it got and the more she got to the end the quieter it became. While she was no fan of cursed objects overall at least this one seemed ready to negotiate.

“I'll read the last pages and you will stop, okay?” she said quietly. The Scratch did not react but as Linda had said, it was always worth the try.  
Still not cursing but now grumbling inwardly she turned to the last few pages.  
 _Your eyes are the sky without the clouds feebly trying to shield us from its horrors_  
“Back to the sky metaphors, I see. Seems like you're running out of ideas.” she mumbled. She turned to the next page.  
 _No, I just know that you like them best._  
She did not throw the book away and screamed because that would cause so much unnecessary noise. Instead she flinched again.

“Linda?” she whispered, slowly turning the page.  
 _Yes._  
“Are you... are you in the book?” she asked, turning the page so quickly this time she almost teared it.  
 _No._  
“Are you sure?”  
 _Pretty much. Look, we're running out of pages here. I have to tell you something important._  
“What?” She turned the page  
 _I love your eyes._

Disappointment flushed through her. “That's all?” she asked, turning another page.  
 _No, it's just that you know the last thing I thought before I … you know was that I never told you that. Just metaphors. Always the metaphors._  
She said nothing. Just turned the page.  
 _You hate metaphors._  
“It's okay.” she whispered. Turning another page.  
 _It's not. I'm sorry._  
“Don't be.” she mumbled.  
 _You would like it here. It's quiet. So very quiet. I miss you._  
“I miss you too.”

She turned to the last page. Vaguely noticed she was crying.  
 _Don't cry. It could ruin the paper, you know._ She smiled through the tears. “Really Linda, is the stability of your paper more important than the feelings of your girlfriend?”  
 _Made you smile. I love you, Rebecca._ “I love you too Linda.”

She tried to turn the page before she remembered that it was the last one.  
For a brief moment she just sat there in silence. Then she put the book down.

“You know Linda, you had always problems with satisfying endings.” she mumbled quietly.  
The Scratch had stopped.


	3. The Stairs To The Attic

The stairs to his attic were wet. They had been wet for two months. They had not been wet before, and Daniel didn't know what had happened. He just knew that they were wet right now and he could not quite figure out why. He had felt them, bringing his finger up to his nose to smell the liquid, then tasted it because he was not a police officer for nothing and decided that it was distinctively indistinctive with a slight sting of salt and probably water. Sea water. 

He would have wondered how exactly sea water appeared on his stairs that were, as much as the rest of Night Vale, in a vast and endless desert but he was not a police officer for nothing and the what was always more important than the why. The city council could deal with that part. 

So Daniel just made sure that he wouldn't slip when he went up to the attic and just ignored it the other times. Two months later though, when he had all but forgotten about the fact that the stairs to his attic were always wet and that they tasted slightly of salt, when slowing down slightly when climbing the stairs to the attic in order not to slip had become a casual movement that one does not really think about anymore, the noise started. Suddenly and with no build-up. 

Daniel stood at the third step of the stairs to his attic and listened. It was faint, reverberating, lashing and _foggy_ in a way that Daniel could not exactly define. He listened to the sound for thirty seconds, then he shrugged and went up to the attic to get his extra white cane, the last one having gotten broken in the chaos and mass panic that was Casual Friday at the police station. On his way down he listened for another fifteen seconds, heard no difference in volume of the sound, or panicked voices of an uncertain future trying to warn him and shrugged again before walking back to his living room. 

The noise continued for one month, reverberating, lashing and _foggy_ , and then the sand came. A crunching sound on the first and fifth step, wet from the way the stairs to his attic always were wet and since Daniel was not a police officer for nothing he decided that this was enough. He had not actually invited anybody over but the situation was slowly starting to get on his nerve, so he was happy when he could hear Roland and Johanna.

“Dusty.” Johanna said, her deep voice gruffy as usual. Before Daniel could defend his cleaning skills Roland in his soft and melodic voice “What do you expect?”. Daniel could hear them walking up the stairs and for a moment his shoulder tightened before he followed them up his stairs. They stopped in the hall, next to the stairs leading up to the attic. 

A uncomfortable silence started and once again Daniel opened his mouth, only to be interrupted by Johanna.

“Should have done this earlier.” “Well, the sand appeared only a few days ago.” Daniel said, slightly irritated. “What do you say Roland, just clean it all up?” “Seems like the best.” “I tried that,” Daniel said. “But it always comes back.” “Seems a bit sad.” Johanna said “Yeah, you can say that, I'll clean myself to death here.” Daniel said with a laugh. “Has to be done at some point.” Roland said “Oh, you're on her side”, Daniel groaned. “Great. Okay, I'll try cleaning it again. If it doesn't work I'll call an exorcist.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Have to get my extra white cane though”, he mumbled. “Broke mine during the mail box possession.” He did not wait for Roland and Johanna to answer, just made his way up the stairs to his attic, grumbling all the way.

As if he did not have enough stress at the moment. Down at the station the chef had been ignoring all the leads he had gotten on the case of the sudden disappearance of every right car wheel in town, two people guilty of severe thought crimes had gotten away and he kept finding random things in his desk. And now the stairs thing. But Daniel was not a police officer for nothing and so he cleaned the stairs to his attic once more and hoped that it would stick this time.  
It did not stick. One week later it started smelling like salt. To the sound, lashing and _foggy_ , came another one, sharp, clutching, shrieking, and suddenly he realized that the sound, faint, reverberating, _foggy _, was the sound of a fog horn and the new one were seagulls.__

__He had always dreamed of living by the sea one day. Standing there he slowly took of his shoes and socks, feeling the wet sand under his feet, slowly breathing in while he heard the sound of a foghorn and seagulls and smelt the salt of the sea._ _

__He did not turn his head when he heard a sound in his bedroom. “What are we going to do with his bed?” he could hear Johanna say, gruffy voice even more gruffy than usual. “Put it in with the other stuff and … you know... something.” Roland said, sounding quieter than usual. “I...” Johanna suddenly sounded hoarse. “Would it be okay if I... if I kept the card I made for him? I mean, he told me I spelt his new title wrong but you know, he just got promoted and I wanted to do something special and it's not actually that easy to learn braille in three weeks and...”, she stopped suddenly and Daniel could hear her breathing deeply. “And he still kept it on his desk you know. All that time. And that new guy will just throw it away, like the rest, you know.” “It's okay.” Roland said, voice soft and melodic as usual and shaking like Daniel hasn't heard it shake before. “It's okay Johanna. I miss him too.”_ _

__Daniel suddenly wished he had his white cane but he left it downstairs like usual only he didn't, he broke it when … when something … and the last thing he remembered was the fact that he thought that he would have to go and get his extra cane when he got back home._ _

__The sand was wet under his bare feet. Roland was sniffing in his room next door and Daniel had always wanted to move to the sea._ _

__So he walked up the stair to his attic that were always wet, slowly opening the attic door, listening for one more moment to Johanna and Roland downstairs, rough and soft, before closing it behind him._ _

__He had not been a police officer for nothing._ _


	4. The Man With No Eyes

The man with no eyes stands at the corner of the street right by Old Woman Josie's house and waits for you. You can not remember a time when he has not been there, not at this corner, not waiting for you. Maybe you got it wrong you sometimes think. Maybe he had been there before you were even born, before Old Woman Josie had moved in, before there even had been a house or a street or Night Vale at all. 

You do not actually believe this. You know that the man with no eyes is waiting just for you. You know that he will always wait just for you.

“Good morning,” you greet him. The man with no eyes smiles but says nothing. “It is a nice day, is it not?” He nods at this, once and curtly, before fixing his eyes back to the point where you had stopped for a moment to tie your shoes. You shrug and keep on walking. There are some days where he won't talk to you. This seems to be one of those.

At work there are more important things than the man with no eyes. There are projects that you thought were due tomorrow before you remembered that your boss does not believe in deadlines. There is hectic scrambling as you quickly finish your concept for the Elementary school sports hall, written with black chalk on pictures of cats with just one eye. You do sometimes hate the layout standards for presentations at your work but at the last job they had wanted everything done in interpretive dancing and you feel too old to learn a new language.   
There is coffee on your desk when you come back from your presentation, almost stumbling over your bag on the way. It's fresh and still hot and you're confused cause there is no coffee machine in your office or in a radius of five miles around your office. You still drink it since it's a free coffee and you are tired.

You do not sleep well lately. The dreams are getting worse.

At four o'clock you leave work, stopping at the Green Market on your way back home. You started coming here more often after they started selling fruits. 

You remember the man with no eyes when you walk into the street where Old Woman Josie lives and see him staring at you with a smile.

When you were young and still curious about the man you had wondered how he always seemed to know which direction you would come from, always facing you as if he was a compass and you were his north. “Good evening,” you say when you reach him. He nods at you. “How was your day?” “Colder than expected,” he says in an accent you can not quite identify. You think it might be Polish but you are not sure. His accent changes, though you have yet to figure out what exactly causes it to change. Sometimes you suspect there is no reason at all and he is just doing it to screw with you in the same way the dreams seem to do. 

“How was your day?” he asks. You shrug. “Stressful. I'll go now. See you tomorrow.” you turn around and walk away, waving at him over your shoulder.

“Don't.”

When you were five you had completely realized that you were the only one who could see the man with no eyes, the man who had nothing were something was supposed to be, a nothing that could not even be defined, less even actually be described, a nothing that was less of an absence and more a state of complete and endless non-existence. You remember walking backwards on that day, looking at him like you were seeing him for the first time.

He had smiled at you like always and he had watched you like always and he had said nothing when you stumbled over the curbstone and the car hit you.

He said nothing when you were allowed to leave the hospital almost two months later and started   
having the dreams. 

The man with no eyes does not help you when you stumble, he does not point out when you are wearing your shirt the wrong way around or helps you when you spill your bag. The man with no eyes is friendly but not a friend and he has never said anything to you that was not small talk.

So you're not quite sure if you understood him correctly. “What?”

“You should not go home,” he says and you try to remember if you hit your head at some point or had a run-in with some guys from the vague yet menacing government organization you forgot about. Maybe it was the coffee. You turn around and there is a small line on his forehead and it almost seems like he looks worried. 

There definitely must have been something in the coffee. You should go and get some rest.  
“Okay. I won't,” and without another look you walk away from him and towards your home.  
You were five when you realized that you could not trust the man with no eyes. 

You do not feel hungry anymore when you make it back home. You feel tired all of sudden, tired and weirdly floppy like you sometimes do in your dreams. They reach for you in the dreams. You're not sure who they are, you're not sure what they want. You just know that they reach for you.   
More desperately lately.

You shudder, suddenly feeling cold. Maybe it's influenza, you think. Or the sudden realization that you can not be sure that reality will stop existing the moment you now longer observe it. You got your vaccines for one of those but you're not sure anymore which one exactly. You decide to go to bed early today. There is an important thing you're supposed to do at work tomorrow, though you're not quite sure if you remember the memo from your boss, candle wax on marble leaves, written in a long dead Czech dialect, correctly. Should probably check that, you think. Your head is swimming. 

It is actually kind of hard to think. You manage to make it into your bedroom, almost stumbling over … over something but you can't get your eyes to focus enough to look what it is.  
You land face first in your bed close your eyes and stop breathing.

It takes you twenty seconds to notice. Then you start panicking. You can not seem to move though. Can't really feel your body either. Or anything. 

It's been forty seconds since your last breath. Your body is stone suddenly, wood, lifeless, nothing but material, trapping your mind, your thoughts that are screaming orders your body does not want to follow.

Fifty seconds. You're starting to get light-headed. You try to push, to fight but you don't know what exactly it is your supposed to fight. Is it the way the only thing left that you feel from your limps is a weak tingling? The way your lungs are starting to burn as your brain, becoming more and more desperate with each second of your live quickly ticking away, yells useless orders to an useless body?  
The hand on your neck, touching it almost so briefly you're not sure if it was there at all?

And then you suddenly can move again and you try to breath and scream at the same time. You gasp and wheeze, greedily drawing in air, cheek wet with tears now finally allowed to fall.

“How are your dreams?” says somebody behind you and you turn so quick you hurt something in your neck.  
“Wha-?” it hurts to speak. You cough and try again. “What are you doing here?”  
The man with no eyes smiles. “They are getting worse, aren't they?”   
You stare at him. You're not sure what to say. Maybe ask him how he got into your bedroom.  
“You shouldn't drink coffee. It is not good for the dreams.”  
You blink. “How did you..?”  
“How long have you know me?” he interrupts you.  
You blink again.   
“Uh, as long as I remember?” it is a weird question but there is no reason to be rude.  
“Exactly,” the man with no eyes says with a wide smile. “As long as you remember. I wish you a good night.” and he suddenly turns around and walk towards the door and suddenly things just seem to click and you open to mouth to ask the question that you are sure will provide you with the answer for everything. 

“What is – what it's even your name?”  
You have been wrong about other things before.

The man with no eyes still stops, hand hovering awkwardly over the doorknob.   
“I am currently searching for a new one.” he says. He says it very quietly as if he is not too sure about the words himself.

“The one I had doesn't really fit anymore.”  
“What was it?”  
“Erika. I believe I was called Erika once,” and he suddenly opens the door and steps out, turning around to you for a brief moment.

“I do hope your dreams will get better,” the man man with no eyes who had always been there says with a smile.


End file.
